


Her Anxiety

by kangeiko



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-31
Updated: 2007-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-09 22:04:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose is anxious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Anxiety

At first, she had been flattered. Well, who wouldn't be? Adam was smart, funny and just as human as she was, but he'd been found wanting. He wasn't the best: _she_ was. That was why she got to go back to the TARDIS and _he_ got to stay on Earth, in his mum's living room.

That was why she got to hold the Doctor's hand, and have him look at her like she was his entire world.

For a while (and she could count the time on her fingers, minute by minute) it had been enough.

It is only later – just before dawn when the Doctor is asleep and she isn't; when the Doctor is busy and she isn't; when the Doctor is planning their next trip and she isn't – it is only later that she touches her palms together and feet it. There: just below the skin, sliding under layers of muscle and sinew, there is... nothing.

Not a single thing.

She had been sure that there was something different about her, something special and exciting and wonderful that made her unique in the Doctor's eyes. But here, in the dark of the TARDIS, the quiet hum of machinery barely audible, she can't bring it back, whatever it was. _Only flesh and bone, after all,_ she thinks dully, and it is terrifying. When he first touched her, palm to palm, she felt something spark between them. It made her jump a little at the time, almost like an electric shock.

But then Mickey, and her mum, and all the aliens and strange people they met were examined by the Doctor's keen blue eyes, looked over and weighed and found wanting.

They weren't good enough.

For one moment – for one brief, intoxicating moment – she thought that it was about her. Rose Tyler: the Chosen One! There was something special about her to make him stop and pause and offer her the TARDIS. She lived with him now, didn't she? No name, no home, no identity, just _him_: almost human, almost male, almost _man_, enough to drive her to distraction sometimes. He's almost not there except when he is, and he only ever _is_ with her.

She knows better now. There is no spark beneath her skin. There is no answering call of electricity or – or – magic, or whatever it was. There's nothing but flesh.

She shivers.

Where is Adam now, she wonders? She'd left him – to follow the Doctor, true, but that excuse doesn't wash anymore, not when the TARDIS is happy and humming beneath her fingertips – no, she'd left him with a hole in his head to whatever nasty fate might befall him. She doesn't dare ask what happened to Adam after they left because she's sure, she's certain, she _knows_ that he had a happy life. She knows that he didn't die in some lab somewhere, hooked up to monitors and full of drugs and God knows what else.

When she was little, she used to watch the X-Files on the telly, long after her mum used to tell her to go to bed. Monsters and aliens and government conspiracies and mad scientists in white coats ready to dissect you – oh yes, she knows. She doesn't dare ask, just in case it shakes her certainty with this world.

What had she been thinking of, anyway? The Doctor's remark – small and throwaway – is lodged like a stone in freshly opened skin. In time, she'll absorb it into herself, grow thicker skin and learn to ignore it.

_Your boyfriends._

_Your boyfriends._

_Your. Boyfriends._

Does the Doctor have sex? Is he... do they...

She pushes at the slick metal beneath her fingers and thinks of what it would be like to live outside of time. Does he even age? In a thousand years she will be long dead, just dust beneath his footsteps, and he would… he might…

There is a tremor beneath her fingers, as if the TARDIS can hear the hurt.

At first, it was flattering. Now, once she has had a moment to think, she can't stop the light, almost hiccoughing breaths from escaping. He only takes the best, and she's the best. That's why he chose her. That's why she's here. And that's the only reason he keeps her around.

Like one of those magic-eye pictures her mum used to love, you had to stare long and hard at it to see what was hidden beneath.

A bloody stupid thing, she used to think. Couldn't happen, no, could never happen, and if anyone else thought otherwise, they were deluding themselves. You don't love someone if they do this, this and this; you don't love someone because of some things and not because of others. You don't get to chop them up in little pieces and tag each piece with love or hate or – or – or indifference –

Another hiccough beneath her splayed hands, sharp and distressed, travelling up the length of her entire arm and she bites her lip. There's no time for this, not even here; with the TARDIS beneath her hands, humming something she can almost recognise. She has to dry her eyes and fix her make-up and meet the Doctor in the Control Room in half an hour. They're headed for Paris, a bare three hundred years from now, and she has to be smart and perky and wonderfully human.

*  
fin


End file.
